1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, with the reduction in size and height of electronic devices such as cellular phones and portable music players, wiring boards mounted on the electronic devices have been progressively reduced in size. Accordingly, multilayer ceramic capacitors mounted on the wiring boards have been also progressively reduced in size and height.
As a method for densely arranging multilayer ceramic capacitors on the wiring boards, for example, it is conceivable that multilayer ceramic capacitors are built into multilayer printed wiring boards (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-203735).
The multilayer ceramic capacitors built in multilayer printed wiring boards as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-203735 are required to be thin. However, the mechanical strength of the multilayer ceramic capacitors tends to decrease as the multilayer ceramic capacitors are reduced in height. Additionally, in the case of forming external electrodes from a conductive paste, the conductive paste is applied to ends of ceramic bodies, and baked, and in this case, the contraction force (tensile stress) of the conductive paste itself is also applied to the ceramic bodies. Then, this stress remains as residual stress in the multilayer ceramic capacitors, thus further decreasing the mechanical strength of the multilayer ceramic capacitors. Accordingly, the multilayer ceramic capacitors are more likely to be cracked. In particular, thin multilayer ceramic capacitors are likely to have residual stress caused at ridges of ceramic bodies. For this reason, the thin multilayer ceramic capacitors are likely to be cracked from the ridges of the ceramic bodies into the ceramic bodies.
The residual stress in the case of firing is likely to increase as the ceramic bodies are reduced in height, and increase as the external electrodes are increased in volume.